The market going downwards the past month might seem to be the factor of ringgit strengthening causing profit taking to take place by foreign investors. It is true up to a certain percentage.

But one thing for sure is that the election is just around the corner. Now we put a 80% chance that election is happening in March 2018 during the school holiday period.

18th March 2018 will be our estimate for PRU 14

So Why Does the Market Slump Have Something to do with Election?

It’s all about the money !!!

Indeed it’s really about the money. The most important thing during election is money. Money buys a lot of things including campaign items like flags, fliers, handouts, you name it, they have it!

All these things cost money and money isn’t going to be printed out of thin air. Even the Bank Negara can’t actually print money out of thin air (technically).

But one mechanism can! The stock market. If you are institutions and you control few of the biggest corporations/blue chips in Malaysia then you have a game to play.

The simple rule of driving the market down and to start collecting stocks is key in obtaining big bucks in the quickest time. You can drive a stock down causing people to sell and although some wouldn’t budge with the sell-down, a high percentage of participants in the market do.

This is when institutions would start to buy at the bottom and when its nearing election the stock price would be pushed up again. Mark to market, we already see a gain and as long as the drive down takes minimum volume. A rule of thumb in stock price movements is low volume equals quick price correction.

Just a month before the election starts, institutions that drove the stock prices up will start to liquidate their positions and immediately ‘printed money’ for the rightful winner. This is where the money obtained in such a quick time can be used to pay election requirements.

Let’s Observe Some Charts

PRU 11 almost similar patterns in November and December – market down 6%

It wasn’t that clear in PRU 12 since the financial crisis actually took over and stock market was at record highs.

PRU 13 somewhere around November -4.88% rise 5% January -4.12% again

So this time around, we see low volume drop from Oct where the ringgit factor start kicking in. Profit taking is always slow but it is not painful to the stock market. But since the start of November we see volume rising rapidly. Again this pattern is almost similar to PRU 13 and PRU 11!

Indeed, the stock market is one of the fastest way and legal to raise money. This is natural and happens almost every where in the world where the local institutions are the sharks in the market.

Under the latest Bank Negara compliance issue, foreign insurers listing in Bursa Malaysia requires a 30% shareholding by local investors. In the report below by CIMB, they view that we would likely see IPOs coming in for large cap insurance companies such as AIA, Great Eastern and Prudential coming into the market.

They would be required to open up their holdings to local investors let it be retail or institutional.

Another alternative would be seeing more and more M&A activities happening. Nothing much to recommend here but its a good head up for now.

Saw this on Facebook feed and it just made it all clear once again that the bull had just started. If you remember previously we said that the interest rate would continue to go higher before market really crashes this proper evidence to prove our point.

Junk bond traders channeling money to stock is just a good example of pushing stock valuations higher and in return, the cost of debt would eventually rise. Companies using bond issue to finance their operations would need to raise the coupon yield to get investors of fixed income interested once again.

The overvalue market would then spark central banks to rise interest rates ensuring that money goes into savings rather than risky investments. Junk bonds would have to compete with risk free rates rising their yield higher. This goes on and on…

Never in history the market crashes with low interest rate. High interest rates are the killer of bulls.

Valuations?

Well I did not use the word cheap any more compared to 2016 where everything is really cheap that time. The rise this year had come to a halt for Malaysia but not for US or other Asian markets especially Hong Kong. Bull run is imminent in that sense.

Bear in mind that we stated the bull just started but we no longer deemed that the market is cheaply valued. But if you fear the bull now, you might feel left out forcing yourself to start buying stocks again but at higher levels. That’s really not worth it.

The best solution is to keep hold of good fundamental companies and try to avoid speculative trades with companies that has rubbish fundamentals.